(Not Quite) Everything There Is To Know About The DC Super Dictionary!
I'm here to tell you what I know about a certain Warner Educational Services book, published in 1978 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

We all know and love the Superdictionary, our beloved Cracktionary. But how much about it do we really know? In this post I attempt to gather some information on this delightful tome and its contents (though it will in no way be complete, as we all know it is mysterious and infinite in its crackiness).

Come and join me after the cut, and learn a bit about our favourite silly educational book!

[Warning: This post is very image-heavy. This post contains many images. There are so many pictures in this post, it may feel like heavy work for your dial-up connection to load them all. Load faster, dial-up!]

The cover of the book as depicted (action figures not included) features art by Joe Kubert and the following boastful description of The Super Dictionary:

A LEARNING DICTIONARY

More than 4000 words defined.

Based on a study of words children need to know for reading achievement.

The back cover has the following quoted in the yellow text block as seen below:

"We all want our children to be excited by learning and gaining an early command of our language. This superb dictionary was carefully and systematically researched to accomplish just these things. Based on established educational methods, it contains all the words children need to know in the early grades. And it is so dynamic in design that children are highly motivated to use it. What could be more exciting than to have the greatest superheroes give meaning to a solid reading vocabulary."

DR. MARIO FANTINI, Dean and Professor,School of Education, University of Massachusetts,Educational Consultant to THE SUPER DICTIONARY

Inside, the book elaborates on its educational content.

It does seem very sincere in its desire to educate children and expand their vocabularies.

There are several more pages after this, with the Atom explaining how to read and use the dictionary (this, I believe, is intended for the child reader). Then there is a list of all the characters in the book, each with their names, a description of the who they are and what they do, and a small picture of them.

The Super Dictionary features some original characters, one of our favourites here being El Dragón. Other characters included Conjura, Jonna Crisp, Jody, SR-12, Wilson Forbes, Ted Trapper and Teri Trapper. You can read more about them here.

Mojojojo from the cartoon show Powerpuff Girls, a villain with a habit of over-explaining everything in a redundant manner, was inspired by the Super Dictionary. Creator Craig McCracken has said that he would "sit around reading that book and just laugh over [the Super Dictionary]."

LiveJournal user sluggirl made a ton of awesome user icons from the images that had been scanned and posted to scans_daily 1.0, and are available here, here, and here. (Oh, how I wish they could make t-shirts with those on them.)

There is a LiveJournal community dedicated to fanfic and fanart (among other forms of creativity) inspired by the Supderdictionary, appropriately called fortycakes.

We like to make jokes about what was going on in the minds of the people who created the book, as many of its entries can be interpreted as confusing and bizarre, sometimes even disturbing and perverted. That's kind of why we love it.

The most famous entry from the book depicts none other than Lex Luthor pulling off a not-so-classic heist:

Part of the book's strange nature is due to how it seems to have been created. Much of the art is taken from various comics published by DC prior to this book's 1978 publication. The art is often cropped, coloured or drawn over, and re-arranged to fit its purpose for a given word entry. As a result, you end up with entries like these:

(Poor, poor Robin.) Thanks to icon_uk's post here, we can see how that last entry (and I think the "promise" one too) is an example of art borrowed from other comics. In this case, it was from the story in Batman #246 called "How Many Ways Can a Robin Die?", which was pencilled by Irv Novick.

Let's take a closer look at who is credited as being involved in the creation of the volume in question.

There's someone who did the lettering, and as I mentioned above, Joe Kubert did the cover, and the authors all seem to be educational experts. There is a group of people credited as working on the art, but the book doesn't seem to credit the creators of any of the original artwork, from which it borrowed so heavily.

Now, I know people often say that they wish DC Comics would re-print the Super Dictionary, giving us nice, new and shiny copies of the book, instead of us having to hunt them down on e-Bay. The bulk of the original artwork in the book was seemingly used without full credit given (at least as far as it is given on the page scanned above). I would imagine that today, any republication of old works published by DC (or any other Warner Bros-related entities) would not be worth the risk of getting sued for not giving proper credit and paying the appropriate royalties to any creators whose work was used in a book.

You would have to look at each entry, match up the art to the original comic and determine the penciller, inker, colourist, and maybe even writer (after all, someone had to come up with the idea to tie Robin up in those ropes!), credit them and work out what, if any, the appropriate royalties might be. I can't imagine it could be anything but an enormous, and possibly messy, undertaking. (I suppose it's possible that the various creators were acknowledged elsewhere and compensated at the time of the original publishing and selling of the book, but if we're looking at the artifact itself, there's no way to tell as far as I can see.)

I know at some point, someone here at s_d had the brilliant idea that DC should create a new Superdictionary, ideally with the creative team of Franco and Art Baltazar, of Tiny Titans fame, writing and illustrating. If such a book were created and published, that would be pretty darn awesome. It's no stretch to imagine such a thing being enjoyed by kids and Superdictionary fans alike.

In the mean time, however, it seems the only course of action is to just enjoy the book for what it is...